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What would Tony Soprano eat?

Andy Griffith always saved room for Aunt Bee’s rhubarb pie. The Brady bunch
couldn’t wait for Alice’s meatloaf. It’s not Sunday in Tony Soprano’s house
without gravy. And everyone knows that Don Draper enjoys an old fashioned now
and then.

Associated Press

What you probably didn’t know is just how robust an industry has been cooked
up around helping fans eat like their favorite TV characters.

Because for about as long as viewers have been sucked into the lives of the
Bradys, the Sopranos and the will-they-won’t-they ups and downs of Rachel and
Ross, a surprising number of them also have hankered for the characters’
on-screen eats. And cookbook publishers have been happy to oblige.

Fans have responded. Ken Beck’s 1991 "Aunt Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook" has sold
900,000 copies. Michele Scicolone says her 2002 book, "The Sopranos Family
Cookbook," has sold 10 times as many copies as her other cookbooks. Publisher
John Wiley and Sons’ 2007 Sesame Street branded "C is for Cooking" flew off the
shelves.

BIG SELLERS

For context, publishers today often consider a cookbook modestly successful
if it sells 20,000 to 30,000 copies.

"Those books do really well for us, especially during holiday season," says
Jessica Goodman, associate publisher at Wiley, which offers several TV tie-ins,
including "SpongeBob’s Kitchen Mission" and "Dora and Diego Let’s Cook."

The genre of television-inspired cookbooks likely traces itself back to
movies. Tie-in books have been around at least since the Pebeco Toothpaste
company published the "Gone with the Wind Cook Book" in 1940.

Some TV-inspired cookbooks feature well thought out recipes created by
experienced culinary professionals, such as Scicolone (who is better known for
cookbooks dedicated to Italian home cooking). Others are essentially community
cookbooks that are untested or barely tested. But none of that seems to matter
to fans.

"A lot of good people are brought on to produce them from time to time, but
people buy them because it’s a lark," says Matt Sartwell, manager of the New
York cookbook store Kitchen Arts and Letters. "Most of the time people don’t
even think about the recipes. Most people understand we’re talking about
fictional characters."

Some of the books, such as the recently released "The Unofficial Mad Men
Cookbook," border on culinary anthropology. Just in time for the long-awaited
start of the show’s fifth season (March 25), the cookbook offers an exhaustive
history of New York dining in the 1960s, right down to the actual recipes used
in Draper haunts like Sardi’s and The Grand Central Oyster Bar.

THE SOPRANOS EAT

For her first Sopranos cookbook — there’s also a follow up, the 2006
"Entertaining with the Sopranos" — Scicolone drew on her family recipes and
those of series creator David Chase to imagine what the New Jersey mafia don and
his family might really have eaten.

"Whenever I write a recipe I always try to put myself in the place where I
had this recipe or what inspired me," Scicolone says. "So in the case of the
Sopranos, instead of thinking of that time on the Amalfi coast, I was thinking
‘What would (Tony’s wife) Carmella make if it was late and she was coming home
after selling real estate all day?’"

Other books are intended primarily as fan documents.

"We were just fans of the Andy Griffith Show," says Beck, who wrote "Aunt
Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook" with co-author Jim Clark. "We knew how we loved the
show and we knew how fans felt. We filled it with photos and dialogue from
scenes around food. We gave all the recipes names based on Mayberry characters."

The recipes came from the show’s cast and crew, Beck says, as well as from
members of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club, founded by Clark. Beck
says the club has 25,000 members nationwide.

The duo went on to write two more Mayberry cookbooks, as well as a book
containing the recipes of fictional cops (for instance, "Colombo") and one with
the vittles of fictional cowboys (think "Gunsmoke"). Their 1993 book "Mary Ann’s
Gilligan’s Island Cookbook" contains recipes from Dawn Wells, the actress who
played the show’s beguiling Mary Ann.

Cookbooks as a general category do well for publishers, but having a
television connection often gives them an extra push. Television shows have long
seasons, an established audience and re-runs with the potential to constantly
generate new customers.

The books also benefit from strong cross-promotional opportunities, Goodman
says. For instance, customers searching Amazon or Barnes and Noble online for a
Dora shirt or a SpongeBob toy might also be alerted to the cookbook, racking up
collateral sales.

Some shows, like the Sopranos, make easy work for the writer by offering lots
of scenes with food. In the ABC series "Desperate Housewives," each character
had her own particular culinary style.

"I felt as though I knew these characters, and that I could easily take their
point of view and give them a voice in the kitchen," says "The Desperate
Housewives Cookbook" co-author Chris Styler, a chef and culinary consultant who
says he was a big fan of the show.

"Some of these ideas, especially for Bree, were easier because she would go
into more detail about what she was cooking," Styler said. "Susan was just
trying to keep her head above water. Lynette was always scrambling to get
something on the table. Gabrielle never went anywhere near a kitchen."